Short stories, American; United States -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
"My old friend Denver Galloway was a born manager," said Sully. He
first saw the light of day in New York at three years of age. He
was born in Pittsburg, but his parents moved East the third summer
afterward.
"When Denver grew up, he went into the managing business. At the
age of eight he managed a news-stand for the Dago that owned it.
After that he was manager at different times of a skating-rink, a
livery-stable, a policy game, a restaurant, a dancing academy, a
walking match, a burlesque company, a dry-goods store, a dozen
hotels and summer resorts, an insurance company, and a district
leader's campaign. That campaign, when Coughlin was elected on
the East Side, gave Denver a boost. It got him a job as manager
of a Broadway hotel, and for a while he managed Senator O'Grady's
campaign in the nineteenth.
"Denver was a New Yorker all over. I think he was out of the city
just twice before the time I'm going to tell you about. Once he went
rabbit-shooting in Yonkers. The other time I met him just landing
from a North River ferry. 'Been out West on a big trip, Sully, old
boy,' says he. 'Gad! Sully, I had no idea we had such a big country.
It's immense. Never conceived of the magnificence of the West
before. It's gorgeous and glorious and infinite. Makes the East
seemed cramped and little. It's a grand thing to travel and get an
idea of the extent and resources of our country.'
"I'd made several little runs out to California and down to Mexico
and up through Alaska, so I sits down with Denver for a chat about
the things he saw.
"'Took in the Yosemite, out there, of course?' I asks.
"'Well--no,' says Denver, 'I don't think so. At least, I don't
recollect it. You see, I only had three days, and I didn't get any
farther west than Youngstown, Ohio.'
"About two years ago I dropped into New York with a little fly-paper
proposition about a Tennessee mica mine that I wanted to spread
out in a nice, sunny window, in the hopes of catching a few. I was
coming out of a printing-shop one afternoon with a batch of fine,
sticky prospectuses when I ran against Denver coming round a corner.
I never saw him looking so much like a tiger-lily. He was as
beautiful and new as a trellis of sweet peas, and as rollicking as
a clarinet solo. We shook hands, and he asked me what I was doing,
and I gave him the outlines of the scandal I was trying to create in
mica.
"'Pooh, pooh! for your mica,' says Denver. 'Don't you know better,
Sully, than to bump up against the coffers of little old New York
with anything as transparent as mica? Now, you come with me over to
the Hotel Brunswick. You're just the man I was hoping for. I've got
something there in sepia and curled hair that I want you to look
at.'
"'You putting up at the Brunswick?' I asks.
"'Not a cent,' says Denver, cheerful. 'The syndicate that owns the
hotel puts up. I'm manager.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account